Loadouts manager

[Beppo]

Well ... on the one side you guys want realism... and on the other side you want the 100% fitting loadout at any time.
Well the average Joe out there and even the special forces use their 'standard' loadout that can personally differ a bit. Only small parts are adjusted before the missions begin and nothing can be changed during the mission cause you do not magically respawn. ... But this is RL... and not a game.

Sure our loadout menu is not a real on-the-fly system, but you can adjust little things without a problem. You should have enough time for doing this during a match. You get 'some' seconds due to the wave respawns naturally.
Learn to fight effectively with the loadouts you currently have available. Noone can magically summon some extra 40mm nades during a battle and reinforcements normally do not come into battle with exactly the stuff in their loadout that the current situation needs.
Again, 32 loadouts are a lot... and even this amount or the manual changing would already support the following:
Situation: Defenders are sitting in a building and are protecting it effectively.
One attacker respawns with only a mass of M67 frag grenades and smoke nades too, perfectly matching for this situation. He will show up, hand out some nades if needed and then the frag fest will start.
Not really something I want see to happen while playing in this situation.

I would suggest even the opposite of hundreds of loadouts available.... setting up the number of loadouts you bring into the game on startup.
Means you have your base selection of ie 4 loadouts that you can adjust on startup before a round starts and that can be selected out of your 32 (or more then). Then while playing the match you can only select between these loadouts that you selected on startup...
Much more realistic and would make the loadouts more realistic too, cause you need to pack your stuff for the given scenario beforehand including equipment for possible situations that may occur during the mission.
It still lets you ie switch roles if a grenadier or sniper is needed or you want to switch from an assault rifle to a mp for CQB cause you managed to get into a building or something similar. So the 4 base loadouts for the match represent the stuff you and your team was able to bring in. So you can switch stuff if needed for your 'reinforcements' that ie would represent your own little troop of soldiers. With 3 respawns (4 lives) this would match exactly the number of 4 base loadouts representing the 4 different soldiers that you personally play.
Something like this is in my mind for quite some time already, tho.

 

[Psychomorph]

Well ... on the one side you guys want realism... and on the other side you want the 100% fitting loadout at any time.

That´s why I´m mostly with my M16A2+5/7 and do not change the loadout often during a game (only changing to the MP5 if hard CQB).


Beppo, whats about the thing you described (adjusting stuff before mission) in that manner:
You have your loadout with defined ammo, and equipment. If you get killed, befor respawn, you should have automatically an option screen (undert he score tab), where you have your loadout displayed, like this:

---M16A2/M203----5/7-----Frag------
------6-----8-------4-------4--------

With the mouse you could click on the numbers and set another one if you need, for example for the case that you need this battle more nades for the M203.
That would be a flexible ingame adjustion that wouldn´t affect your base loadaout. It would be the equipment adjustion you described, soldiers do befor the battle.

And if you don´t want to have one item, you just click on the weapon name and it will be marked with a big, red "X" and the ammo number turns grey, or transparent. That would only affect equipment and other weapons, such as grenades and pistols, but if you have an M16A2/M203, which are mounted together, you would be forced to set the ammo for the M203 on "0" to "disable" that weapon.

If you don`t need to change, you just press the "Enter" key and you respawn. If you want to adjust/define that stuff durng a game (for next respawn) you just press "F1" (score) and you could do it. This would also allow you to check your current loadout stats every time.

 

[Beppo]

This will not get past the 'unrealistic' stuff I described.
Your direct on screen editing is the same as going into the loadout menu and adjusting the loadout, saving and activating it then. It would still allow the player to remove his M16 and add 99 frag grenades 'on the fly'.
What I meant was setting up your x number of base loadouts on startup (default can be set in the menus beforehand of course) and then you can select one of them while waiting for your next respawn. Adjusting these loadouts then should be possible. But only the removal of certain objects like you would be able to do in RL too. You can simply grab only your main weapon and some nades and leave the pistol and clays behind. So reducing the stuff you are carrying into the battle would be possible by stripping the stuff you don't need before you respawn or after you have respawned already. But not increasing the amount of mags or nades etc. beyond your loadout defined maximum.
This in combination with a hardpoint system (already posted in another thread) that limits the number of items you can carry 'naturally' will be the system that prevents people from setting up unrealistic and situation specialized loadouts.

 

[OICW]

On a somewhat related note Beppo, would it be possible to add (for argument's sake, assume you're using the UT2004 engine) in a system like Hidden and Dangerous 2 where the more ammo and grenades you take, the more equipment appears on your character?

Obviously to keep it easier on the modellers (and probbaly make more sense realism wise) you could do something like say for every 3 magazines you take, there's a pouch on your soldier and say every 2-3 grenades you take a grenade pouche appears.

 

[fist_mlrs]

it is possible, for example via multiple bodymeshes or additional meshes attached to preset bones. on a smaler scale this is allready done with the backpack in inf.

 

[keihaswarrior]

On a somewhat related note Beppo, would it be possible to add (for argument's sake, assume you're using the UT2004 engine) in a system like Hidden and Dangerous 2 where the more ammo and grenades you take, the more equipment appears on your character?

Obviously to keep it easier on the modellers (and probbaly make more sense realism wise) you could do something like say for every 3 magazines you take, there's a pouch on your soldier and say every 2-3 grenades you take a grenade pouche appears.

It is possible to a certain extent. If you take a look at Red Orchestra mod for UT2k4, the soldiers have the 2 grenades handing from their belt. The soldier grabs and throws these and they are no longer on the model.

It would be very cool to see this for all the equipment, but it might need to be cut back a bit. It would be a lot of animations to have 1 for a soldier removing the 40mm grenade and loading it from each of the 16 (or however many) pouches in his vest.

 

[Nukeproof]

@Beppo

I like the idea of this preselected loadout per map.

Although the 32 LO limit doesn't seem tight at first (especially when you stick to our favorite weapon), with all this additional weapons coming up, I think a LO switcher (that can swap loadout-files) would at least be helpful.

The problem is the servers not running certain weapon mutators, that can potentially render the majority of your welldefined LO's useless.

I was about to replace the M16A2 in all "no-scope, with m203" loadouts (I have a couple) with the M16A4, but finding myself unarmed on allmost every european server made me reconsider... and others will tend to stick to the vanilla weapons for just that reason.

I know the M16A4 is still beta, but most admins will certainly dislike certain weapons and refuse to run the mod.

And this nade-spammer loadout example you mentioned is possible atm but I never realised this happening online.

IMHO, what INF does way better than any other game I've come across is to give a very unique feeling to every single weapon. I choose some although I know I suck with 'em just to enjoy a weapon I didn't use for a while... so all in all the best way to show my appreciation to the modeller/coder/animator is to actually use their weapon.

And If I had to fiddle around with loadouts during timeout just to gain access to a rarely used example I would more often just stick with my favorites. This is not about having a highly specialised LO for any considerable situation, it's just to keep simple access to every weapon you find enjoyable in INF.

 

[mute_dammit]

Beppo, your points about realism are well taken, and in fact on servers that prompt for fire before respawning you, there's a good compromise between realism and usability. However, many servers seem to run with instant respawns, which makes changing loadouts for any reason difficult unless you want to do it in the middle of a firefight. That's the main reason I was looking for a faster way to modify loadouts. In fact, just having a faster way to select the default loadouts would be nice.

 

[ninjin]

personally i only have abour 14 or so loadouts which out of it i only use 6 of them (with my claymore loadout being the most used ) of various weapon usually without pistols unless i use an SMG. Must of my configurations are good enough for most situations so i can say that i dont suffer from the "too many loadouts" syndrome.

 

[Beppo]

On a somewhat related note Beppo, would it be possible to add (for argument's sake, assume you're using the UT2004 engine) in a system like Hidden and Dangerous 2 where the more ammo and grenades you take, the more equipment appears on your character?

Obviously to keep it easier on the modellers (and probbaly make more sense realism wise) you could do something like say for every 3 magazines you take, there's a pouch on your soldier and say every 2-3 grenades you take a grenade pouche appears.

This is already a part of the Hardpoint System we have in our minds. Everything you carry will be visible if you would be able to see this in RL too.
Means, tac vests, 40mm grenade vests, a buttpack, backpack or grenades on your vest... all visible. Only the stuff inside your trousers pouches, inside closed pouches on your vest or within the butt/backpack will not be visible.

@mute and the rest too of course...
The short selection of one of the x base loadouts should be a single key hit or a selection option on the spawn screen. We plan a spawn selection screen for the next INF and there it would fit perfectly. In addition a ForcedRespawn would not fit to a game mode with several spawnlocations that we have in mind.
For the current INF 2.9 you can use the NewWave mutator to setup a limit that players have to wait before a next wave will drop them into the game. This way you will get enough time to select your loadout before you respawn.
NewWave - Author: Beppo
- Description: This mutator was designed to get rid off the one second respawns that sometimes do happen. It can be setup to ie. not allow respawns within the first half of the next wave. This way you force players to stay out at least this amount of time.

 

[ninjin]

so beppo, does that mean we'll have chest pouches and all sort of extra pouches and bags in the future to encumber (sp?) the inf soldier more?

 

[Beppo]

something like this yes... standard gear for certain aspects that you can select yourself.

 

[OICW]

I'd like to suggest that to help differentiate the teams a bit more, one team has a modular LBV, and the more gear you have, the more pouches appear on it: something the Tactical Tailor Rifle vest, or the S.o. Tech Rifleman vest:

http://www.lightfighter.com/ProductImages/TacticalTailor/Vests/TT-tac1a-web.jpg

http://www.lightfighter.com/ProductImages/SOTech/SOT-Deltavest-web.jpg

The other team would have a different style of harness, perhaps like one of the harnesses below, and obviously once again, the more gear you have, the more it shows up.

http://www.lightfighter.com/ProductImages/Arktis/ARK-1624-web.jpg

http://www.lightfighter.com/ProductImages/SOE/SOE-lightfightervest-web.jpg

http://www.lightfighter.com/ProductImages/Eagle/Vests/Eagle-LBVE-web.jpg

This would make working on attachment points and modelling a bit of a pain, but I feel that it'd be worth it to help create the impression that you are on a distinct (considering that there's no distinct weapons per team) team, rather than just two groups in different camo. I am also aware of the possible realism issues with why one team is wearing an assault style vest better suited to another task (i.e CQB) on some maps, but that's something that has to be dealt with.

 

[Psychomorph]

Maybe a bad suggestion, but I had it some time.
What about if you have after the installing no pre loadouts? So after installing, you have to make all the loadouts manually. That way, you would learn about the weapons from the beginning (bulk and so on).
You wouldn`t just install and play, but learn the weapons.

Therefore they should be a duplicate (make copy) option, so you could duplicate a loadaout, if you only need to change the primary weapon.

 

[Beppo]

forcing players to setup a loadout themselves before they can start to play is a big no-no...
many players hit the start button directly without even setting up their keys... and even folks that setup their keys have no plan on how to setup their loadouts ...
everything that blocks new players from playing in any kind of way will not be somthing that we would implement...
so default settings including default example loadouts are a must

 

[Psychomorph]

Of course, I know a stupid idea, but for professional players that would be something good.


Oh, that would be good, to be able to make groups in the loadout list. I actually did the group, by making a loadaout with the name:
"-------------------------------"
This loadaout is not to use, but to keep groups. So it looks in my menue so:

...
Custom_M16A2_5.7_3/G_(H_vII)
Custom_AKMSU_5.7_3/G_(H_vII)
---------------------------------------
Assault_M16A2
Assault_SIG552
...

Thats what I mean with groups, so it is easier to overlooks the loadaouts.